Remnants vs. The Cavendish Laboratory

As we assembled for the last Remnants game of the season the Sun
disappeared behind a blanket of clouds and we were set for a gloomy
finale, at least in the literal sense.
As it turned out it was pretty gloomy in the metaphorical sense too.
Our opposition today was the Cavendish Lab (i.e., the
physics department) and there are about ten Remnants players who
work there, and so could easily have played for either team.
In the end there were only two such traitors (whose names will be
kept secret for the moment), but the resultant bitterness was such
that one of them was told to ``fuck off'' when he attempted, out
of force of habit, to enter the home dressing room. However this
mixing of teams did allow some non-regulars to play, and indeed
there were four veterans of the first Remnants game (in 1980) present:
Geoff Hales, Anton Garrett, Pete Warner and Steve Gull. For the
latter it was his first game of the year, and means that he's played
at least one game in each of the 22 seasons for which Remnants have
existed.
Without wanting to be portentious,
only once in those 22 seasons have we been beaten by 10 wickets . . .

. . . something which remained a possibility when we chose to bat first.
After the early (and uncharacteristic) loss of Nick Clarke, we got
going quite well, with Russell Woolf (22) playing a number of
elegant cuts and Andy Owen (32) pushing the ball round nicely.
The pace was probably a little slower than we would have liked, but
things were still going okay when Tony Malik (19) joined Andy at
the crease. One of the traitors then came on to bowl ``spin'' at
his erstwhile captain, and was greeted with ``good-natured'' baracking
from the crowd in the form of a rather tuneless chant of ``Come on
Aussie, come on, come on'' and general animalistic jeers at the
numerous bad balls. However after this piece of theatre the wheels
came off, and a flurry of wickets fell, including three in the last
over. This left us with the rather unimpressive total of 91/9 off our
112 deliveries, and the possiblity of the 10-wicket loss, whilst still
improbable, couldn't be ignored.

By the end of the first over of the Cavendish innings the other
traitor had revealed his colours, Phil ``Judas'' Marshall pulling
Tony Malik (0/25)
for a flat six. And by the end of the second over the game was probably
already lost: the other Cavendish opener, on his way to an imperious
46*, had taken the total to 26. Watching this occur showed how important
psychology is in top-level sport, as from this moment on there was no
fight in the game, and it was just a question of how many overs it
would take for the Cavendish to reach the target. In the end it was just
6.2, or 50 balls, although there was the slight compensation that we
got one wicket, Paul Henderson (1/14) catching and bowling (caught and
bowleding?) Phil for 32.

So, a dark end indeed, although we were still in the black for the
season overall, having won 14, lost 10 and tied 2 of the non-internal
games played. After the match there was a nice tea in the bar (and
some impromptu team photos) along with a training session for future
Pakistani opener Inzamam Malik. However it was soon clear that there
wasn't enough food for us hungry lads (or, indeed for Anton), so
we adjourned to the quasi-trendy Cafe Naz (previously the less
imaginatively named Cambridge Curry Centre) for butter chickens and
the like.
There were some quick thank-yous by (and to) Geoff, and some
piss-taking from the nearby table of ugly morons, but the real
focus was on trying to get the waiters to stop serving us drinks and
start serving us curries.
Here again Anton was the star of the show, gleefully finishing
off other people's meals whilst recounting stories of once having eaten
so much he had to sleep straight, being unable to bend at all. By
midnight it was all over, and we went to back to our homes, musing
over the season gone, lamenting the length of the English winter, and
trying to get to sleep without thinking about Anton's flexibility.